


Don't You Ever Look Away

by museicalitea



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, Post-Canon, just very slightly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: Support across oceans and continents is hard; when you know a person but barelyknowthem, when the distance is just that bit too great.Yet for Leo, Otabek cannot help but try.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Haunt Me: one character watching over another", indirectly chosen by the lovely Mandy ([nautilics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilics)) - and title is from Vienna Teng's [Never Look Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0KmI0b1oAs), chosen very directly by the lovely Meg ([strikinglight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight))!
> 
> Hope you enjoy! (and if any of you are as !!!!!!!!! about Leobeka (gen, shippy, ALL OF IT) as I am please feel free to yell at me about it in the comments or over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/museicalitea) *_____*)

Otabek’s coffee has just finished filtering when his phone buzzes and a tiny Instagram icon drops into the screen. He taps the notification and takes up his mug while he waits for the app to load. It's strong, dark, reviving, but too bitter, and he grimaces. Fool on him for trying another coffee brand; he's adaptable about many things, but coffee is his morning comfort and he can’t stand it if it’s not _right._

Leo's Friday night Instagram posts always come within the same ten minute span week to week, and Otabek waits for them with impatience. He’s normally content to let life take its own pace, when it comes to other people; and he drives himself hard enough and far enough to eschew any restlessness at his own failures and setbacks. But these videos captivate him. Skype and social media are all very well for staying in touch, but Otabek dislikes distance. People are more precious when they’re close,and getting to see all of Leo, and even just a fraction of his hard work—

Otabek will pursue that with no care for patience or sensibility.

After all, he misses Leo. They haven’t been rinkmates for years, but Leo was more than a rinkmate, and sometimes, Otabek still feels the space where Leo might have been so much more in his life. He cannot regret the choices he’s made—they’ve been good ones, in the end, and even if they hadn’t, thinking of hindsight is useless when there is the whole of the future to look towards. But he does wonder, in these moments by himself, when his only company is indirect and at great distance.

These posts Otabek awaits aren't Leo’s usual shots, posing with friends or musing his thoughts to evening cityscapes or the odd candid his coach takes of him mid-routine on the ice. Friday evenings—Otabek’s Saturday early morning start—are his progress videos, which he’s been posting since last year’s off-season. Sneak peeks of his programs to come, some weeks. A new jump combination in others.

For the last month, it's been one jump.

Otabek switches to data before he plays the video—his WiFi is stable most of the time, but his phone gets patchy when it comes to playing videos and gifs, and he wants to see this in full, right now. The black screen spins as it loads, then snaps into bright life, Leo's rink lit up and nearly empty. Leo himself is out in the centre, in training black and marking out his movements, and Otabek brushes his legs through the floor in faint echo. This is a sequence ingrained in his muscle memory. It tastes of difficulty and frustration, and burns like victory in those final moments springing into the air, and coming down on top of the world.

Even from far away, Leo’s face is focused, eyes distant as, movements small, he glides; spins; launches his arms.

“Leo!” his coach calls from behind the camera, and Leo glances up, shakes his hair out his face. He pops one earbud out, then the other, and zips them away in his jacket.

Otabek puts his mug on the bench, and clutches his phone a little tighter.

Leo begins to move, in long, purposeful strokes across the ice. He’s building up speed and momentum, and Otabek recognises the sequence he’s doing from the free skate he filmed a while back. He’s getting close, and Otabek can see it in his shoulders when he moves into that final arc across the ice, into the free spin—

And he bends low. Picks hard. And launches high into the air.

_One-two-three-four—_

But his weight’s wrong when he comes down, and Leo’s blade skids as he lands and sends him sprawling across the ice.

Otabek’s gut twists, and a sigh escapes him, gusty and sympathetic. He picks up his coffee again, but doesn’t drink; just cradles it in his hands as he watches Leo get to his feet and try it once more, only to stumble and fall again. He’s getting so close. But it’s frustrating, Otabek _knows._

Leo’s goal is to land it. He’s messaged Otabek over LINE, showing him the videos from his private Instagram, the one he’s only linked to his fellow skaters, where he’s half-got the landing through two-footing, touching down. But that’s not good enough. Otabek knows this. Leo _feels_ it.

So he switches to the other notification that’s come up in the last minute, the same video but from Leo’s private Instagram, and taps the comment box.

 ** _otabek-altin_** _Watch your weight on the landing._

Through the rest of his coffee and breakfast, his phone remains quiet as he scrolls through Leo’s Instagram and Yuri’s, where it looks like Yuri spent half the night arguing some point about rock versus alternative versus punk music with JJ. It looks like they were both enjoying themselves, and Otabek can’t help but smile as he washes his dishes, packs his bag, and slips out the front door.

It’s a twenty-minute run to the rink, but Otabek takes his time. It’s a quiet morning, cool and clear with the sky still tinged palest gold on the horizon. He put together a new playlist of some of his electronica Beethoven remixes last night, and switches it on as he begins to jog.

Five minutes out from the rink, his phone buzzes. He slows to a walk after the next traffic light and pulls it off his arm, flicking it open.

Leo’s replied to his comment.

 ** _leoincognito_** _rrrgh that’s what my coach is saying too >:/ any tips? have a good time @ practice today what are you working on?_

Otabek pauses in his tracks. Maybe he should ask his coach to take a look at him doing the jump before he answers Leo. He and Leo have vastly different styles, but jumps use essentially the same technique no matter who’s performing them. It might be worth a shot.

 **_otabek-altin_ ** _I’ll ask my coach and let you know. I’m running through my free program today. Going to try it with the 4Lz._

Leo replies not a minute later.

 ** _leoincognito_** _OOOH NICE gl gl!!! hey, i’ve got that draft playlist for my buddy’s 21st ready for you to listen to if u want me to link u soon?_

At some point, Otabek became Leo’s go-to music beta listener. He hardly minds—their music tastes align well and Leo crafts good playlists—but it does intrigue Otabek that someone so self-sure and grounded as Leo seeks a second ear like his so often. He loves to share the music he loves, Otabek has no doubt; but is it more than that?

He hasn’t seen Leo in person since last October. He hardly has room to guess at things like his insecurities. He doesn’t know if he even has that right.

 ** _otabek-altin_** _Of course. I’ll listen after practice._

The rink’s just across the street. Otabek readies himself to exit the app and put his phone away; and then, he hesitates. Though he’s been working on it the whole off-season, these last five weeks have had Leo so focused and single-minded about landing this jump that Otabek’s concerned. Just slightly. Leo’s a positive person by nature, and not one to easily give up.

But _catching up to damn near everyone else_ is a hard goal to visualise, and what Leo must accomplish to perform this great feat—enormous.

So Otabek moves his thumb to the comment box, and starts to type again.

 ** _otabek-altin_** _Keep calm about your 4T. You’ve got the technique and rotations. You’ll get it soon._

 ** _leoincognito_** _ehehe glad you think so… mmmmmmmm feels like i’m gonna get it once maybe and that’s gonna be it…_

 ** _leoincognito_** _keep wondering if I should scrap it for gps and focus on my lz-lo combo instead_

Otabek's mouth goes dry. The morning presses in on him, too high and silent in his ears as his vision clouds to everything but the words on his screen. Leo doesn't say stuff like this in public. He wants to keep his internet persona happy, a positive, safe place, and his own troubles come second to his friends, Otabek knows. Within minutes, he's bound to delete these two comments.

Otabek types at double speed.

 ** _otabek-altin_** _You’re close. Do it first and then decide if you want to keep it in or not._

 ** _otabek-altin_** _Don’t give it up before I get to see it in person, Leo._

 **_otabek-altin_ ** _You can do it._

The pedestrian light’s green. Otabek glances for cars—better to be safe than sorry—and zips his phone in his pocket as he jogs across the road. He’s just running late, now, and he needs to focus on his own practice, landing his own challenging quad.

All he can do is hope what few words social media allows him are enough.

The ice clears Otabek’s head. It always has. Out there, his body is responsive, tight-wired, and there are springs in his legs and fire in his feet. Every move feels surer, this morning, every turn and spin tighter. If he wants Leo to show him this quad, he ought to give as good as he gets.

In his final run-through of his free skate before lunch, Otabek lands the quadruple Lutz.

Opening his phone as he sits with his skates unlaced, Otabek realises he never closed Instagram before coming into the rink. He refreshes Leo’s video. A few more of Leo’s skating circle have caught up with it; and, to his surprise, all the comments from this morning are still there.

And he has a Snapchat notification. It’s from Leo.

Snapchat always takes a while to load, and he gets both skates off and stowed away before coming back to his phone and opening the snap.

It’s a video. It focuses on Leo’s practice-weary face, the familiar lockers and posters of the rink’s changing room just visible behind him.

“Hey, Otabek,” Leo says. And then he pauses, averts his eyes. Is silent for one, two, three beats as Otabek watches.

"I..." Leo sighs, long and slow, and looks at the camera direct. A small, soft smile draws across his face. "Thank you."

The video cuts. And another one starts, with Leo walking through the foyer of his rink in the pink wash of the sunset.

“I’ll do it for Skate America. Hold me to that, yeah?”

He beams at the camera before it jostles and the video cuts for the final time, and something lifts and lightens in Otabek's chest. Leo's always been one to talk, when it matters. Maybe Otabek should ask him about Skyping sometime soon. Their time difference sucks, but they can make it work.

(And they do, a week and a half later, when Leo Facetimes him at four in the morning and lands the quad toe solid and sure right before Otabek’s eyes. He gets no more sleep that night, lands only half of his own jumps at practice that day and can’t even bring himself to care for how proud he is. This was the great hurdle, and now Leo’s passed it.

And with this skill, this great achievement behind him, the path before him is going to be bright and limitless. It’s a sight Otabek has seen before, and he treasures that Leo will see this too.)

The summer sky is clear and endless above him as he leaves the rink that afternoon; and success lies behind him, out there on the ice.


End file.
